It was mid-March when I first arrived in North Carolina 29 years ago. Charlotte was still small town and a New Yorker named Jimmy Valvano had just coached his team to the national championship. I was a 14 year old kid moving from Columbia, South Carolina and North Carolina seemed to be an exciting place, a great place to grow.
I attended Quail Hollow Junior High School, where I was one of the AV kids who worked the camera during homeroom for principal Charlie Daniels’s morning broadcast throughout the school. I also got elected to the student council during my junior year at South Meck High School.
We moved again in another March, this one 1986. We moved into a home along Route 7 in Great Falls, Virginia and I enrolled at Herndon High School where I would graduate a year later. I would return again to North Carolina in 1992, this time making Raleigh my home. Aside from a few years in Garner, I’ve been here ever since.
I’ll always associate March with transitions. And new beginnings.